Conservative Views Challenged In Synod

November 28, 1985|By Bruce Buursma, Chicago Tribune.

VATICAN CITY — A special world synod of Catholic bishops continued its proceedings Wednesday amid mounting signs that synod leaders are challenging the conservative and pessimistic views advanced by a key Vatican official here.

The meeting, called by Pope John Paul II to study the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, has opened with three days of reports that acknowledge widespread difficulties for the 800 million-member church, but stop short of attributing those problems to the dramatic changes in Catholic discipline and practice enacted two decades ago at Vatican II.

In fact, a number of the speeches delivered thus far at the gathering appear framed as an implicit rejection of the largely dour views of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, German-born prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The 58-year-old cardinal, who was appointed the church`s chief theological watchdog nearly four years ago, has given shape to the synod`s debates in a controversial interview published in book form earlier this year. In the book, entitled ``Report on the Faith`` in its original Italian version, Cardinal Ratzinger calls into question many of the innovations of Vatican II and asserts that the council`s hopes for a ``new Catholic unity``

instead have resulted in a ``dissension which . . . seems to have passed over from self-criticism to self-destruction.``

Moreover, in his eight-minute intervention at the synod on Tuesday evening, Cardinal Ratzinger employed equally stark language, contending that the Catholic Church has become the ``object of suspicion`` and has acquired the image of ``a great multinational corporation (which) can inspire only fear and hate in people.``

Cardinal Ratzinger`s charge that the church has lost its course is given added weight because of his role as the Pope`s main defender of orthodoxy and his own reputation as an accomplished theologian who abandoned his earlier allegiance to progressive, if not iconoclastic, religious thought.

transformation, saying it is ``something one would not have thought possible in the light of the remarkable theological work which this man produced in the 1960s.``

In response to such criticism, the cardinal has bluntly observed, ``It is not I who have changed, but others.``

Cardinal Ratzinger has carefully avoided a specific indictment of Vatican II reforms, although he has sternly rebuked those who commit ``abuses`` in the name of the ``spirit of the council.``

Liberal dissidents, he said, have created a climate in the church in which ``truly every type of heretical aberration seems to be pressing on the doors of the authentic faith.``

The prefect was born in Bavaria and grew up in a Nazi Germany he remembers as a ``realm of atheism and deceit.`` He was ordained a priest in 1951 at the age of 24.

His theological acumen, demonstrated during his time as dean of the theology faculty at the University of Tubingen, was such that he was made a

``peritus``--expert--for the West German bishops at the Second Vatican Council from 1962-65. He was made bishop of Munich and elevated to the College of Cardinals in 1977.

Since his arrival in Rome as the leader of the Vatican`s doctrinal department--once called the Holy Office--the cardinal has conducted a number of highly publicized inquiries into the teachings of prominent Catholic theologians.

He also has offered a treatise which takes a generally dim view of the style of ``liberation theology`` practiced in Latin America, faulting it for incorporating Marxist analysis in its evaluation of cultural problems and the church`s response.

The synod, which is to continue for 10 more days, may yet veer toward a more sympathetic treatment of the concerns expressed so forcefully and frequently by Cardinal Ratzinger. But for now, the alarms he has raised appear not to be widely shared among the 165 bishops at the meeting.